


Time was away and somewhere else.

by giuliamaze



Category: Raven Cycle - Maggie Stiefvater
Genre: Adam Parrish-centric, Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Alternate Universe - Magical Realism, Book 1: The Raven Boys, Canon Universe, Episodic Narrative, F/M, Implied/Referenced Child Abuse, M/M, Magical Adam Parrish, Magical Realism, Magician Adam Parrish, Not Beta Read, Not Canon Compliant, Psychic Abilities, Ronan Lynch Has Feelings, Sweet, Tarot, Vignette
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-06-09
Updated: 2020-06-09
Packaged: 2021-03-04 01:00:04
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,898
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24625126
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/giuliamaze/pseuds/giuliamaze
Summary: Adam Parrish was five years old when he first dreamt of the future.Episodic rewriting of the Raven Boys with the Parrish boy starring as the Magician from the very start.
Relationships: Richard Gansey III/Blue Sargent, Ronan Lynch/Adam Parrish
Comments: 11
Kudos: 82





	Time was away and somewhere else.

**Author's Note:**

> English is not my first language, and this is not beta-ed.  
> Please let me know of the mistakes you may find!

**Time was away and somewhere else** ,  
there were two glasses and two chairs  
and two people with the one pulse  
(Somebody stopped the moving stairs)  
And they were neither up nor down.  
  
_\- Louis MacNeice._

  
  
  
Adam Parrish was five years old when he first dreamt of the future.  
  
On a stormy Sunday afternoon he woke from his nap and fell into his mother’s embrace in a desperate frenzy. He flinched away from his father’s caress for no reason at all, tears flowing down his face as Dad put his hand on his dusty hair, “Why're you crying like a little girl?”  
  
Young Adam turned away from the question, rubbing his face against his mother’s neck, loud and frightened, sobbing in a way he knew had an expiration date.  
  
  
  
-  
-  
  
  
  
Adam was eight years old when his father found him in the backyard, laughing as the Grass whispered in his ears. The Grass told the _best_ stories, their thousands voices always much funnier than the Rain’s old tales and the Wind’s secrets.  
  
“Who are you talking to?”  
  
The Thunder roared somewhere above them but his father could not hear it. Adam almost mixed it up with his own heart beating faster and faster.  
  
“Nobody.”  
  
The Wind picked up around them as Adam lowered his eyes in the way his mother had taught him.  
_Don’t look him in the eyes, love.  
  
_“Who are you talking to?” Robert Parrish growled at his young, stupid son.  
  
_Keep the secret,_ _love_ _. No matter what.  
  
_“Nobody.”  
  
Hours later, in the dark of his bedroom, the Wind brought Adam the smell of the Stream and the voice of the Trees, and together they cried until kind Rain lulled them both to sleep.  
  
  
  
-  
-  
  
  
  
Adam was a little older than twelve when the strange woman first approached him. He was a bit too old for _stranger danger_ , and little could hurt him more than home, and he was curious.  
Smoke clung to her, singing highly of her, and the Wind was encouraging, but the Forest was distrusting and the Lightning resentful.  
  
“You remind me of myself, may I call you by my own name?” asked the woman, and Adam instead of replying tilted his head to the left to listen to the Dreams, always deceitful in their assessment.  
  
The woman nodded, pleased with his answer.  
  
At first it was books: he read them standing near the school gates a few minutes everyday, as much as he could without tipping off his parents.  
As the season turned cold and the days shorter, it was disgusting herbal tea from a shockingly pink thermos. Along came riddles, anecdotes, unfunny jokes.  
  
“I starve when I live and eat when I die, what am I?” Adam recited back to the Grass later that night, and when he gave the answer they laughed and laughed.  
  
The woman drew on the sidewalk with colored chalk, and Blue broke their pattern adding flowers and butterflies and knives to the asphalt, and the season grew warmer as Adam learnt of ambiguity and hard situations and impatience and Judgment.  
  
On the very first day of Spring the woman handed him a small silk bag, still warm from her pocket.  
  
“This will be your weapon, _Persephone_ ” she told him, and she did not wink but it was a close thing.  
  
Adam knew how dangerous it would be to bring the cards home, and it was not even a real gift, for it was clear to everyone involved that the deck did not belong to him – but the tarots were content enough to sit with him for now, and Persephone smiled at him one last time before walking away.  
  
The deck stayed warm in his pocket for years.  
  
  
  
-  
-  
  
  
  
A scholarship, two jobs and a few lucky tries at scratch cards later, Adam linked eyes with one Richard Gansey: the Forest had already held him twice and cried over him in a way Adam could feel all the way to his bones.  
  
Ronan Lynch came shortly after, smelling of blood and Creation, almost too hot to touch, deceitful Dreams whispering furiously in his ears.  
  
Adam hated them both, until he didn’t.  
  
  
-  
-  
  
  
  
"What _is it_ that you smell like?”  
  
Ever since deciding that Adam was the only one actually getting his death jokes, Noah had been asking him the strangest questions.  
  
“What do you mean?”  
  
Noah puckered his lips in thought, displeased, carefully weighting his words before trying again.  
“You have this… _energy_ around you. It’s what I imagine magic being like. Are you, like, a witch or something?”  
  
Adam thought of the Fire’s voice, of Lightning and its Energy, of Papa Winter’s laughter, of the Grass and their fairytales, of the Stars’ promises. Adam thought of the first time the Wind held him.  
  
“Or something, I believe.”  
  
He should have asked something in return, maybe commenting on the way Time left the room in distaste when Noah sat with them or how the Element never knew how to approach him.  
  
“Race you to the front door?”  
  
  
  
-  
-  
  
  
  
Adam had never _really_ tried to hide from them.  
He knew things useful to their hunt for the Raven King, too many to explain while keeping secrets straight, and he was already hiding way too much.  
  
He did not want to become like his mother, so used to keeping secrets to have forgotten herself along the way.  
  
His tarot deck didn’t really think of Monmouth Manufacturing as home but it was a close thing.  
Adam shuffled them absentmindedly whenever he was feeling worried about a test, or anxious about a visible bruise, or so broken on the inside that he could feel the Wind enter his body through the cracks and play with his Echo.  
  
It was usually Gansey who joined him, asking about the next steps in his quest.  
Smart, proud Gansey, who kept both the room and Death wrapped around his little finger.  
  
Adam sat cross-legged on the floor as he drew for Gansey the Page of Cups and the Eight of Wands and the Card with No Name, remembering dreams of Time caressing Gansey’s hair, of Death’s trembling hands as they kissed Gansey, light as breath.  
  
Ronan sat at the desk near them, cleaning under his nails with a switchblade and pretending not to be listening to them.  
  
It was raining, later that day, and Ronan loaded Adam’s bike into his car and drove the boy to work without a care about getting his shoes wet.  
  
“Why are you lying to him?” Ronan asked him once they were both inside the car.  
  
“What about?”  
  
“Your dreams.”  
  
Adam turned sharply in his seat. “How would you know about that?”  
  
Ronan rolled his eyes and breathed noisily through his nose before replying.  
“You are always so – shifty when you keep secrets from him. It wasn’t difficult to guess, after that.”  
  
Adam looked out the windshield, thinking of the Page of Cups, and the way Fire no longer sung for him the way it used to.  
  
“So?” Ronan urged him.  
  
“My dreams aren’t… clear, not yet” he sighed, giving himself in to the awkward discussion. “There’s no immediate danger, which is what you were after? Always the guard dog.”  
  
Ronan cut a sharp look in his direction, but he let the jab fall still.  
  
“Which does _not_ mean there is no danger at all. Just, not in the next ten minutes.”  
  
“Something like that.”  
  
  
  
-  
-  
  
  
  
When Gansey first approached Blue, Adam hid his face in his hands.  
  
Yes, he had been staring because _yes_ , she had grown up beautifully, but he was mostly fighting Vietnam flashbacks of the one and only time he had tried to kiss her, one warm September afternoon when they both were thirteen, and of the way she had punched him in the throat.  
  
She recognized him on sight and touched her thumb to her throat in a life-threatening gesture, wide eyed and smiling like crazy. Adam was terrifyingly fond of her.  
  
Later the same night, as he tried to persuade Nino’s staff _not_ to call the police over Ronan fighting Declan in their parking lot, Blue called him _Persephone_ and invited him at 300 Fox Way for dinner and all was fine again.  
  
  
  
-  
-  
  
  
  
Adam went shopping before taking his bike to 300 Fox Way for dinner.  
He prepared a strawberry shortcake as the Sisters got dinner ready, and the whole experience was like wearing glasses for the first time in a long, long time. He was so used to being unable to explain the way nNature spoke to him that being _understood_ again all of a sudden was dizzying.  
  
At dinner, they spoke of school, of sage, of the Judgment, of the loving way the Wind spoke to him – and the Lightning was in no way less rancorous with the women that stole its Energy but it still sung every time he brushed fingers with them.  
  
Persephone asked him, “How are your tarots doing?”  
Adam didn’t reply, but he thought of the deck being warm and pliant in his hands and he smiled softly, and she somehow nodded pleased.  
  
Neeve had not once spoken through dinner and Parrish could not pry anything about her from the Rain or the Spiders, and it scared him but he let it go.  
  
The women tried to have him sit in the reading room for dessert, but Blue dragged Adam in the garden to eat the strawberry cake and look at the night sky.  
  
“So, true love. How is that treating you?”  
  
Blue sighed, long and heavy. She did not reply.  
  
The dark air was thick with the honey-sweet smell of Nightmares, and Adam was happy with people that understood him, and he thought of Ronan.  
  
  
  
_-  
-  
  
  
  
Really_, Adam sacrificing himself should not come as a surprise to any of them.  
  
Linking his own energy, his own body to the ley line was the only possible solution: he had _years_ of experience, the Forest would prefer Gansey but they _liked_ Adam, they had spoken to him many times before, and the Wind was strong behind him and the Stream sang as it washed away the blood from his hands and Whelk’s body.  
  
Not the Spiders nor the Rain knew anything about where Neeve may have disappeared to, but they would be looking for her and there was nothing more to be done about it.  
  
The lay line run through him and told him many stories, because this had been his destiny ever since he heard the Stars whisper for the very first time and he knew those promises were for him.  
  
He was not lost to them.  
He smelled Lightning and breathed Magic and _he_ _was found_.  
  
  
  
-  
-  
  
  
  
Noah’s funeral was a strange experience for Adam, because he could hear Time sigh contently behind him as they lowered his casket and the warm Earth ready to embrace his body with motherly love for many years to come.  
  
He felt almost guilty knowing what they were to do later the same day.  
  
  
  
-  
-  
  
  
  
They did not speak much as Ronan helped him heave his (very few) possessions up the stairs to his new room above St. Agnes church. He could feel the Fire from the candles call for him from the lower lever but he was too tired and sweaty and hurt to care.  
  
Once the door was closed behind them, Adam got his deck out of his pocket and began lazily shuffling them, walking slowly, measuring the space. _His_ space.  
  
He fanned out the tarots and called after Ronan.  
“Choose one, Lynch.”  
  
Ronan sneered as he walked out of the bathroom, a drop of water dripping from his nose as he did so.  
“I don’t care for your tricks.”  
  
“Excuse me? I am a non-highly trained psychic. Choose one.”  
  
Adam already knew what the boy would draw: he felt the card call his name and get warmer and warmer in his hands, but he allowed Ronan to play the skeptic before reaching out.  
  
“Two of Cups” declared Ronan, looking the card front and back before handing it over. “Will I ever be rich, Mr. Psychic?”  
  
Adam let the tarots fall to the floor and kissed Ronan into silence.  
  
Adam could smell Nightmares on his throat and Creation on his hands, and he told Ronan so, and they kissed everywhere they could reach.  
  
  
  
-  
-  
  
  
  
Noah was back at Monmouth Manufacturing, and Blue was spending more and more time with them, and Ronan was strange as usual about his sleeping patterns, and Gansey was pensive, and maybe a bit angry.  
  
Adam sat with his friends to the table and explained to them _all_ what had gone down, what he had been thinking, why he was not regretting his decision.  
Lightning made blood pump in his veins and Thunder roared in his deaf ear and Time was no longer looking at him in the eyes, turning its face at first, then walking away entirely from their conversation.  
  
Blue kept her hand on his shoulder as Gansey asked questioned the tarots, and Ronan looked like he wanted to touch but refrained from doing so.  
  
The ever present Page of Cups had found a new companion in the Four of Swords.  
  
“You will need it” warned Noah. “You _all_ will need it, so – rest up.”  
  
Adam smelled sweet Nightmares surrounding them and he could almost taste strawberry cake on the roof of his mouth, remembering his conversation with Blue from weeks before. He turned to find her watching Gansey, something so raw and wanting in her eyes that it almost made him blush.  
  
The Death tarot card was burning in his pocket and there was no way the whole thing was ending well for any of them, but at least they had Truth and they were together.  
  
  
  
-  
-  
  
  
  
Spring was turning warmer, and Chainsaw was growing bigger and more and more in love with Ronan, and sweet night air entered from the open window over Adam’s small bed in the attic of St. Agnes.  
  
Adam whispered, “If you want to _keep_ me you will probably have to fight the Wind. I’m its favorite.”  
  
Ronan growled and bit softly at the back of his neck.  
  
Around them he could smell the Storm: electricity and magic and very old, possibly true tales.  
  
“Who else?”  
  
“The Grass were my first best friend, back when I found the Wind boring. The Trees love me, even if they like Gansley better these days. The Rain, of course, but that one should be easy.”  
Adam turned into Ronan’s embrace, facing him with an amused smile.  
“The Fire has been _warming up_ to me, lately, so them too.”  
  
Ronan groaned, and they laughed together.  
  
“They can keep you, you _dork_.”  
  
  
  
-  
- **  
  
  
  
O** **ne year later** , friends gained and friends lost, Adam is growing older.

  
His time at Aglionby (in Henrietta, really) is almost over and the tarots have been getting colder to the touch, now smelling faintly of 300 Fox Way. He tells Ronan so, wondering about when to schedule a dinner with Blue and her mothers.  
  
Even after finding out about his college scholarship he has been cutting back work hours, needing money but needing more time with his loved ones.  
  
“Make it Thursday so I can come too.”  
  
“Thursday is Declan’s birthday, don’t think I am forgetting, don’t be rude.”  
  
  
-  
  
  
They have dinner at 300 Fox Way on Thursday: both Persephone and Adam make cake, and Blue only eats her greens and the whipped cream coming with Gansey’s piece of cake.  
  
  
-  
  
  
On Friday Declan invites both his brothers to dinner, save for the birthday boy himself not showing up, having already paid in advance for their pizzas and a bottle of wine. As they order dessert Adam phones him to wish him a happy birthday and thank him for the pleasant evening.  
Ronan laughs in his ear and kisses his neck.  
  
  
-  
  
  
The following week Adam falls out of bed and he feels cold all over.  
He gets the tarots out of their black silk bag and they will not _speak_ to him. His heart breaks, and he mourns the deck as if he had lost a long-time friend.  
  
Ronan fishes a hand out of the covers, finds his head, follows it out of bed with his upper body.  
  
“What are you doing?”  
  
Adam gulps down a hiccup.  
“My deck is not mine anymore. I knew it was coming, but...”  
  
“Would these work for you, too?”  
  
Ronan makes tarot cards fall into his lap like confetti, and when Adam touches them they are warm and smell of home and Love and are _his to keep_.  
  
The back of the deck is very simple, black field and the golden outline of a raven.  
The art is colorful and always moving, all the Kings have light eyes and dusty blond hair, and the Page of Cups is a very blue girl, and Death smiles sadly in its Aglionby uniform, and the Two of Cups represents the outline of two chalices touching or maybe a first kiss.  
  
The Stars are no longer whispering above them, silently listening for Adam’s reply.  
Magic has the beautiful illustrations glow in turn as it plays with them, and Wind caresses them both sweetly.  
  
Adam cries again, and they kiss until Two becomes One.

  
  


Time was away and she was here  
and life no longer what it was,  
The bell was silent in the air  
And all the room a glow because  
**Time was away and she was here.**

_\- Louis MacNeice._

**Author's Note:**

> Thank you for reading my lucid dream.  
> Magic realism is my kink (and also are my sweet, sweet bois, I luv them so much).  
> The poem is from one Louis MacNeice because I suck at art.
> 
> I don’t have a Tumblr like all the cool kids but please feel free to leave a comment to tell me how my English sucks.
> 
> (Shh, my husband doesn’t know I’m writing for the first time in five years because of YA novels.)


End file.
